One Day At A Time

Arthur Titherington’s One Day at a Time is a cheerful little reminder that joining the Army to “see the world” can, under certain historical circumstances, be one of the worst travel decisions available. Young Arthur signs up, the Empire does its usual paperwork, Singapore falls, and suddenly the brochure has changed from “adventure and service” to “Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, starvation menu, compulsory mining, no refunds.”

This is his account of 1,300 days as a British POW, including Kinkaseki, the copper mine in Taiwan where men were worked like machinery, except machinery usually gets oil, shelter, and slightly better union representation. The title sounds almost cosy, as if someone is about to explain how to organise your shed or cope with retirement using a notebook and a nice cup of tea. Instead it means exactly what it says: get through today; tomorrow can be horrible when it arrives.

There are no glossy war-film heroics here, no stirring soundtrack, no officer leaning nobly against a map while someone says “by God, Jenkins”. This is war after the flags have been folded away and the human body has been left to argue with hunger, fear, cruelty and exhaustion. Titherington writes as someone who was there, endured it, remembered it, and then had the audacity to expect the world not to mislay the whole thing in a drawer marked “unpleasant but over”.

Naturally, officialdom also appears, because no British wartime story is complete without somebody in later years explaining, with a straight face and a clean tie, why compensation is complicated. Having survived the Japanese camps, Titherington then had to take on the even colder machinery of governments, claims, apologies, evasions and the great imperial pastime of hoping old soldiers will stop making a fuss before anyone has to write a cheque.

So yes, this is a POW memoir, but not one sitting politely in the corner being grateful for a commemorative plate. It is angry, plain-spoken, stubborn and necessary: the testimony of a man who went through hell, came back weighing rather less than intended, and spent decades making sure the names and facts did not get softened into “hard times” by people whose idea of hardship is a delayed lunch.

Very Good copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books, with an extra plastic protective dust jacket — which is frankly more protection than the British Empire managed to provide at several key moments. A serious book, a battered century, and one survivor’s refusal to let the whole miserable business be filed away as character-building.

Keep browsing: See more War books Other books by Arthur Titherington